Hong, 55, has laboured over the dish -- which must be boiled for 12 hours over a wood fire -- almost every year for the last four decades. "We can buy ready-made banh chung but it doesn't create ...

Exhausted after 12 hours of cooking, Nguyen Thi Thuy Hong gently unpeels the last of five leaves encasing a squishy, sticky rice cake known as "banh chung" -- a Lunar New Year delicacy in Vietnam. The ...